Dragon Quest: The Definitive Thread

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Caliane

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Rajaah said:
Yeah you get used to it. It's a retro thing, there was a time when most RPGs were that first-person combat view where you didn't see your characters attacking. It was really Squaresoft who changed the game with Final Fantasy showing the characters stepping forward and doing actions.

This seems to be the main complaint about DQ3 HD and it's really just a harkening back to the way it used to be done. That or they wanted to save money, IDK. Then again the environments in this game look pretty incredible and I think it might be the best-looking 2D game I've seen at this point.
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It's a strange design choice.

Dragonquest combat is taken right from Wizardry. party based first person dungeon crawl. text/menu based.
1731590499737.png


dq 1 had the backgrounds t hat matched the environments.

1731590757078.png


dq 2 and 3 originally, dropped the backgrounds, going back to black. to save space and make the game bigger.

1731590516179.png


Then yes, final fantasy introduced the party on the right, ON SCREEN, and jumping in to attack.

Phantasy star 2 was 1989. I don't know if this was the FIRST game to use behind the back 3rd person party, with attack animations.
1731591082182.png



Might and magic 3 was the first m&m dungeon crawl with character portraits on screen. 1991

so here... we have the party on screen during attack selection. ugly ass hp/mana Ui. I legit don't like how open the screen is. sure the giant ass original menus weren't great either..

1731591221145.png

then a swap to battle phase, with no characters...

1731591317200.png


showing the characters, then swapping to first person and not showing the attack is a very strange choice.

Instead of copying other jrpg design, like ff, golden sun, etc. I would have used the might and magic/bards tale/dungeon crawl party layout system.
1731591500431.png

or portraits, that react to situation.
1731591696267.png
 
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Caliane

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I feel much the same looking at all of the 2d/3d remake there. It all seems to clash with the underlaying game systems. I would 100% just prefer a 2d high def sprite game.
 
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Derkon

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Yeah the command screen hovering over the Hero character in that HD-2D screenshot looks really bad.
 
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Hateyou

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They could’ve just made that menu full vertical and to the left and it wouldn’t cover the hero. What a shitty design.
 
Daidraco

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I mean a portion of those issues came from the fact that we were on some god awful fucking resolution back in the 80's and 90's. So playing them now, the UI just looks atrociously big for no other reason than what would appear to be a bad design decision. But when you're playing on a monitor/tube that was maybe 14" inch's on average at the time, it kind of makes sense. Same goes for the UI that tries not to block most of the screen.

I remember my buddy had this little TV. Couldnt have been maybe 6 inch's big. But the battery pack that went with, extended the depth of the display like 2 foot. The NES plugged into another portable pack that wasnt near as big as the TV. All so we could play Dragon Warrior or some shit out in the middle of the woods.
 
Hateyou

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Daidraco said:
I mean a portion of those issues came from the fact that we were on some god awful fucking resolution back in the 80's and 90's. So playing them now, the UI just looks atrociously big for no other reason than what would appear to be a bad design decision. But when you're playing on a monitor/tube that was maybe 14" inch's on average at the time, it kind of makes sense. Same goes for the UI that tries not to block most of the screen.

I remember my buddy had this little TV. Couldnt have been maybe 6 inch's big. But the battery pack that went with, extended the depth of the display like 2 foot. The NES plugged into another portable pack that wasnt near as big as the TV. All so we could play Dragon Warrior or some shit out in the middle of the woods.
Click to expand...
We are talking about the remake where they could have designed things however they wanted. Why did they make a dogshit UI which covers an entire character when there’s tons of widescreen real estate to not do that?
 
Daidraco

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Hateyou said:
We are talking about the remake where they could have designed things however they wanted. Why did they make a dogshit UI which covers an entire character when there’s tons of widescreen real estate to not do that?
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Nostalgia for all I can gather. He mentioned it earlier, but Phantasy Star 2 and 4's UI was probably my favorite. I dont know if thats a good thing or not, though haha.
 
Pyros

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You don't really have to look at the hero or your own chars much anyway since you see them the entire game and they literally just stand there doing nothing, and when the attacks occur and there's some fancy(sometimes) effects it's in 1st person with only the monsters displayed. Realistically the only thing you need to see during combat is the enemies, so I think the UI the way it is looks fine. A full vertical menu would be more annoying to navigate and busier imo. Like sure the base menu could be vertical but once you press Spells or Items it'd be super restrictive.
 
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Rajaah

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Caliane said:
It's a strange design choice.

Dragonquest combat is taken right from Wizardry. party based first person dungeon crawl. text/menu based.
View attachment 559108

dq 1 had the backgrounds t hat matched the environments.

View attachment 559115

dq 2 and 3 originally, dropped the backgrounds, going back to black. to save space and make the game bigger.

View attachment 559109

Then yes, final fantasy introduced the party on the right, ON SCREEN, and jumping in to attack.

Phantasy star 2 was 1989. I don't know if this was the FIRST game to use behind the back 3rd person party, with attack animations.
View attachment 559117


Might and magic 3 was the first m&m dungeon crawl with character portraits on screen. 1991

so here... we have the party on screen during attack selection. ugly ass hp/mana Ui. I legit don't like how open the screen is. sure the giant ass original menus weren't great either..

View attachment 559118
then a swap to battle phase, with no characters...

View attachment 559119

showing the characters, then swapping to first person and not showing the attack is a very strange choice.

Instead of copying other jrpg design, like ff, golden sun, etc. I would have used the might and magic/bards tale/dungeon crawl party layout system.
View attachment 559120
or portraits, that react to situation.
View attachment 559122
Click to expand...

This just reminds me how damn far ahead of its time Phantasy Star 1 was. It's just a basic Master System RPG, but it came out in 1988 and all the NES had at the time was Dragon Warrior 1.

Also never really thought about the fact that DW1 had battle backgrounds and DW2/3/4 didn't. Not sure why this never stood out to me.

Would love to play the Wizardry series (along with the Ultima series) if they ever get any sort of modern ports / remasters. Kinda shocked they haven't yet. Didn't Wizardry 1 at least get some sort of remake not too long ago?

Got the new game, in the process of starting it up now. Hero/Fighter/Monster Wrangler/Goof-Off is the party. This should be a fun evening.
 
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bolok

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Rajaah said:
This just reminds me how damn far ahead of its time Phantasy Star 1 was. It's just a basic Master System RPG, but it came out in 1988 and all the NES had at the time was Dragon Warrior 1.

Also never really thought about the fact that DW1 had battle backgrounds and DW2/3/4 didn't. Not sure why this never stood out to me.

Would love to play the Wizardry series (along with the Ultima series) if they ever get any sort of modern ports / remasters. Kinda shocked they haven't yet. Didn't Wizardry 1 at least get some sort of remake not too long ago?

Got the new game, in the process of starting it up now. Hero/Fighter/Monster Wrangler/Goof-Off is the party. This should be a fun evening.
Click to expand...
Wiz 7 and 8 are still modern enough to not be completely awful. 6 MAYBE. Is the remake you're probably thinking of. That said, the early wizardries are potentially better played via their JP console ports. That IP situation with sirtech and the JP releases is something. Kind of depends on your tolerance for rerolling character stats for hours or just yolo'ing it or (boo hiss) using a trainer to save you time.
 
Rajaah

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Anyone know where the "Ortega falling into volcano" cutscene is? I thought it was at the beginning / during the intro in the NES version but it's nowhere to be found here. Maybe it happens later on and I'm remembering wrong?

A few quick thoughts:

-Monster Wrangler is pretty weak at first (levels slow, takes a lot of damage, died more than anyone else). Then at level 6 it becomes completely overpowered with a super low-cost group heal that essentially makes you unkillable for a while.

-Normal difficulty, which I assumed is the NES version difficulty, is super easy. Considering turning it up to hard mode, but I'm not sure what that entails. A lot of it being super easy comes down to the group heal. I haven't even upgraded my gear from the town shops yet and I'm barely taking damage, just from levels alone.

-Thief is super overpowered right from the get-go, and gets extra gold from fights (which is useful early when everything is wildly expensive). Definitely a good class to start people on before switching to their "real" class later and bringing a big dose of speed along with them.

-Female Thieves wear tight black leggings and have great butts.

-Gadabout (Goof-Off) actually isn't bad at all in this version. Has decent stats, can hit hard, and doesn't seem to waste nearly as many turns as I remember it doing in past versions.

-Went Thief/MW/Gadabout for my classes, to later be turned into Fighter/stay MW/Sage. Might replay this on hard mode after the first run, if interest holds, and go Warrior/Mage/Priest to check out the other classes (Merchant is just bad).
 
Caliane

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checking a long play. yeah, weird. totally redid the start.

I also noticed, they retconned the musclemen guys in. you know the miners with the accents.



this is bizarre.,. this is like redoing FF3's start... that epic as shit opening.
the SNES remake I can get behind. letting you see him more.

maybe it'll come later as a dream, or just periodic as flashbacks? not a fan either way.

this guy points out the dq 11 book was also added.
 
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